First off, Congratulations Panda! Despite the running, when I walk I'm still in the 12-13 minute miles.
So now my report:
My race went well but was rather uneventful other than that it was my first serious evening race. (My first race ever was in the evening but that's whole 'nother story.)
First, my mom was doing the one mile "walk." I put walk in quotes for this reason. The event form said walk, which is how I convinced my mom to try it. My dad, who has walked 5+ miles everyday since I was 2, signed up for this on that same notion. My local running club however, is very walker adverse. Not publicly, but they just, don't really encourage it and see it as people who just aren't ready to run yet. Well of course the gun sounds, and everyone takes off running. ugh. Despite being walkers and only jogging a bit (my mom ended up doing about a W4/R2 and my dad a R3/W1) and pretty much untrained they both came in second in there age groups and finished in 10:30 (Dad) and 13 (mom). Unfortunately, I think the walk event turning into a run thing soured them on the whole race experience.
So the mile finished at 7:50 and the 5k started 8. Needless to say it was pretty dark. I guess I should start the story with the fact that there is this one girl who has been at every race (except for 1) with me. She's a good 3 (almost 4) years older and ran track in high school but that puts her in my age group at the opposite end than me. Well every race she's finished about 1 minute ahead of me, so my unofficial goal has become to beat her. Well I started out about 15 seconds ahead of her at mile 1, hitting it at 7:50 and finding a good race partner in an army reservist who is probably about my dad's age. She catches me shortly after mile 1. The race goes through two towns that neighbor each other. As we run through downtown, I'm consisently 15 seconds behind her. While downtown is well lit, the series of turns into the residential neighborhood off of it are not. Additionally, these roads desperately need to be paved, and if you all will excuse me for saying it, God must have been watching out that no one broke and ankle on one those pot holes. I hit mile two at 16:30, and the girl is now 20-30 seconds ahead of me and my pacer as we both had to take the waterstop (side note: my last race benefited a beauty [excuse me scholarship] pageant and the girls did not want to be there, this one benefited a girls basketball team in its first ever season and they were the best volunteers I've ever encountered [so spirited and on top of it complete with a list of everyone's names and numbers so that they could cheer names instead of just bibs]). Well, back through downtown is one of those annoying "slight" inclines where when you've already been running for two miles you think that this is some sort of cruel trick. At about 2.8 miles the girl I'm trying to beat (who has been still 20-30 seconds ahead of me) starts walking. I decide to make a break at it and start sprinting, unfortunately I know this can not last 1/2 miles but my thought process is she's obviously tired if I can clear her by ten seconds I can hold her off. I close the gap from 20 to 5 seconds she looks back and well the witch (there is another word I'd like to use here but it'd be censored) takes off sprinting herself. At the three mile mark she is ten seconds ahead so I start sprinting again, but so is she and it just won't happen. She beats me by 17 seconds. I'm still proud of my new PR (25:32; 8:14 pace) and 2nd place age group finish (20th amongst women [there was a high school cross country team using it as a pre-season warm up] and 73rd out of 135 overall), but I'm still slightly bitter about not beating her.
Jennifer
GO! WISH Team GO! 
I loved that you were curious about your very own shadow, bless you. 
Great race report. 
